Not sure what else I could add, the title says it all. When iTunes match was first announced, I remember someone saying “It just works”. With no disrespect intended, that is a load of bull! iTunes Match does anything but “just work”. While the idea is great, there is still some work to be done.
I will start with a minor annoyance. While much of my music was matched with no problem, I find it quite irritating that sporadically there maybe a song or two on an album not matched, which must be uploaded. I’m pretty sure that if 80% of the Album is matched, the rest of it is there as well. Just for some reason, not matched.
One of the things I find very annoying is that you can no longer sync your music to your phone. Why in the world would they remove this feature? To remove music from your I/Os device, you must do it manually right on the phone. For the iPhone or iTouch, that means you are limited to removing music by song, album or artist. On my iPad, it’s even worse, I only seem to be able to remove music by song. My lord, there has to be an easier way. Was it really that hard to make it so we can continue to sync music to our devices like we always have?
So you think it is as easy as just disabling Match to be able to sync like the good old days? Um, sorry! After attempting to do so, for some reason certain Albums just refused to be added to my phone. I tried syncing, downloading from the cloud, downloading from purchased in iTunes and none of them would work. If I looked at the directory of music on my phone in iTunes, the albums were listed as being on my phone, but for some reason they were greyed out and listed three or four times. Unfortunately, this lead me to having to set up my phone again entirely from scratch.
After setting it up as new I was able to sync like I was able to prior to match. To this point, I have not enabled Match again on my phone, nor do I have any plans in doing so. The idea of having all that Christmas music stuck on my phone with no simple way to remove it was not appealing to me. I have re-enabled it on my computer as I do like the idea of having a backup of my msuic, without me actually having to do it. Unless they make some fixes, this will be my permanent solution. Whether I renew or not next year when it is time to fork up another $25.00 is still to be determined.
Unfortunately, my list of annoyances doesn’t end here with iTunes Match. As I remember the other bugs and kinks that need to be worked out, I will come back and add them. I have also been working on a list of features that iTunes seems to be lacking even though we are on the 10th version.
@StupdLittleBlog
Dude, I have iTunes match enabled and I can Sync just fine…Not sure what’s up on your end. I also have noticed some annoying bugs, but glad I don’t have that syncing one.
Actually, from everything I read you can no longer sync. Try removing something and syncing and let me know if it works. It shouldn’t, lol
Just hooked my phone up to my PC, Added/Took away Music, and it is syncing just fine….Are you referring to something else? I’d have to believe that if people could not Sync their phones at all this would be a huge problem….yet your the first person I’ve heard about it from. Very strange, for sure.
@Robby: do a search for itunes match stuck on google and you’ll see how many people have problems.
I just purchased itunes match today, and seeing the time apple is struggling to get this right worries me. I am experiencing the same problems. I’m a programmer, I do know how to handle a pc. Your reply is pretty ignorant.
Why would anyone ever pay $25 dollars to do this. Would much rather pay $120 dollars a year for things like rhapsody.
Pay $25 to use your own music.
iTunes Match doesn’t work! My iTunes crashes every time it tries to synch with the damn iCloud. I’ve scoured the internet, and this is a common problem. Mine crashes during step 3 where it is supposed to upload artwork and music that their precious iTunes store cannot match.
I’ve asked for a refund because I felt stupid to begin with for doing this. I’d rather create a playlist for music I will manually upload to my iPhone.
im having the same problem thomas. how do you set your phone up from scratch again? does that erase everything?
I have no problem getting it to sync but streaming from the cloud is horrible. Downloading from the cloud, or even surfing through my uploaded music, is slow no matter what speed I am connected at. It’s quite crappy as it is now but the concept is something I really really want.
I have had itunes match since the day it came out. I was so excited. I have grown to hate it more and more everyday I use it…FULL of bugs.
No album art, downloading freezes (wifi), no matching on at least 80% of music (80+ gb and I have spot checked about 30 albums and they DO exist in itunes yet no match)
My feedback to Apple: So far, Match is a complete crapass joke and is clearly not ready for consumption. You should not be charging a dime for this. Poorest demo of cloud tech capability yet, in the market. It’s confusing–the whole, “it’s in the cloud, but it can be downloaded (if you know in advance which songs you intend to play), but if you delete that song then, it’s still in the cloud, unless you remove it from the cloud–then you lose it completely.” Really? It hesitates REALLY badly–it is useless for me to select a song and have to wait for over a minute for it to start–if it starts at all. F**kn’ useless! If it doesn’t start, it has sometimes frozen the Music App (which is one of the only apps, naturally, that cannot be restarted without shutting off the phone–smart!) And, worst of all, many times it pauses and buffers WHILE a song is playing! I love entertaining and having the music go dead in the middle of a song we’re all enjoying… how very 8-Track. Match sucks! Here’s an idea: Upgrade the underlying storage subsystem and use flash/SSD, increase the network core and WAN bandwidth and have better burstability, create better source and use F5 to load balance requests, use more mirrors for the songs, do better background buffering of the whole song. REDESIGN AND RE-CONCEPTUALIZE TO CUSTOMERS THAT THERE ARE TWO BUCKETS–THE FREQUENT PLAYS AND THE ARCHIVE. THE SONGS IN “FREQUENT” GET DOWNLOADED CONSTANTLY TO THE DEVICES; THE “ARCHIVES” CAN BE ACCESSED FROM THE CLOUD. Rethink it. Do something! Jeez! I am not one to be wow’d because Apple stuff is shiny. Until you do actually do something: “Match completely sucks.”
OMG Mike, you are RIGHT on with this product! The streaming from my own iCloud space I just paid over $25 for doesn’t work half the time, is slow, and my songs that weren’t found in the iTunes store never get uploaded…instead, iTunes crashes during this step (3) EVERY time.
iTunes Match doesn’t work! My iTunes crashes every time it tries to synch with the damn iCloud. I’ve scoured the internet, and this is a common problem. Mine crashes during step 3 where it is supposed to upload artwork and music that their precious iTunes store cannot match.
I’ve asked for a refund because I felt stupid to begin with for doing this. I’d rather create a playlist for music I will manually upload to my iPhone
I have all of the above problems with IMatch. It is unbelievable that it has not improved over a year. I find it odd that I can stream music from the IMatch cloud without, delays or freezes but my SiriusXM APP streams flawlessly pretty much always. I can sort of umderstand a delay when the song first starts but once it is streaming what’s the difference … Not the network or the phone. Also, another nasty bug is about 80% of the time the music player app crashes on load … Just worthless. I hope they don’t try to auto-renew my subscription.